H1N1 virus to stay if health officials in the city fail to rework a proper strategy
The department of health and family welfare on Saturday decided to fix the swine flu test fee done by the 13 private labs in the state at Rs 3,750 including collection of throat swab and testing
Chennai: The dreadful H1N1 virus - swine flu - will be here to stay if the city health officials do not rework their strategy. The city corporation appears to be assuming that the influenza virus will only work or rather remain active for 12 hours a day. That is the impression one gets after observing the camps it had opened at Koyambedu moffusil bus terminus (CMBT), Egmore and Central railway stations to screen people for swine flu.
The camps remain open from 8 am to 6 pm (two shifts), notwithstanding the fact that most of the travel, particularly inter-state travel, happens after dark or early morning. Working in two shifts, two doctors and pharmacists have their hands full, if one were to factor in the 200-odd people voluntarily taking pills for common cold and fever. Even during the 55 minutes this journalist stood there observing the camp Saturday evening, nearly two dozen people, from kids to wheelchair-bound elderly, collected their share of pills.
The corporation, which has also stationed a few men to distribute handbills, could have done better by printing the handbills even in English. “Tamil… No Tamil,” said a Tirupati-bound visitor before returning the pamphlet to the civic worker. A watchful corporation field officer who stood beside this journalist quickly intervened and said, “We have already placed orders to print 2.5 lakh handbills in English.”
And that was not the end of it. A quick tour inside the bus terminus, especially near the inter-state buses bay showed more to prove the civic body’s laxity. Little effort is made to bring either TNSTC/SETC bus crew returning home after their trip to neighbouring states or the visiting public to the camps. Unsurprisingly, 50 MTC staff had consistently turned up at the camp since Day 1.
However, the corporation alone is not to be blamed for this apathy. CMDA, which owns and maintains CMBT, has barred them from pasting swine flu awareness pamphlets/posters on its campus. “We pasted the handouts within days of opening the camp at CMBT early this month. We found the handouts removed the very next day,” said a civic worker requesting anonymity.
As if that were not enough, CMDA had briefly prevented them from distributing the handouts after they found the terminus littered with swine flu handbills, unaware that not all handouts are read. Worse, SETC and MTC have ‘snatched’ the public address system they had lent to the civic body briefly to educate the visitors. “We do not have a mike. We used their PAS. After a few days, they refused to give us the microphone. We cannot blame them as they have regular operations to take care of,” civic workers there complained.
A second visit to Egmore station later in the evening gave a lesson of enviable punctuality standards of the civic workers. There was hardly any trace of a medical camp existing there at three minutes past 6 pm. When asked why they were present only between 8 am and 6 pm, a health department official officer, requesting anonymity, said, “It is a mere awareness programme. People with common cold and fever will approach as soon as seeing the doctor. This is just to educate them.”
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